smebro's Blog

I will do my darndest to spend more time here. Especially after I get a new job with fewer hours.

Quick update for those that recall sme.

I’m still at a ‘same old same old’ sort of station in life. Damn this job and all things associated with it except for the pay… love the pay…

I best be careful to avoid zombiism.

I have been pretty sporadic in my participation here lately. Whenever I come back I always check story comments first of all. Am I right in guessing new blog comments no longer registers? Did it ever?

What’s new? Lots and none. I have a solid goal to get fit again and no excuse not to follow through. I now have an excercycle and as of this weekend the ‘Wii Fit’. NO Excuse! I couldn’t believe how much weight I had put on over the last year, I’m ashamed… perhaps I hid it well, but none the less I will be aiming to get back to my healthy weight and using the Wii Fit to track my progress.

On that note, if you have the cash for the Wii and Wii fit, then go get it… Nuff said for now, if I find the results satisfying enough then I will post some updates. That being said it would be because of a change in lifestyle…not just because of the new equipment (although that certainly helps motivation).

Also, grand theft auto rules.

Also, the Wii is where its at. No doubt.

Also, Atheism is still cool.

Also, The last season of Lost has been awesome.

Also, I am now a fan of Japanese horror, I have a few recs.

On that note I recommend the Spanish horror flick ‘Rec’. One of the best  horrors I’ve seen in some time… see it online (or on DVD to support the makers) before the American remake comes out in October (the American re-make is the original cheesified… just see the original and then look  at the trailer for the Hollywood treatment)

Hope alls well

Regards

Sme

I was sent the original by a workmate.

So I went and changed it all over the place. It is now radically different to the original and is worth sharing...I think.

Working later hours. From 11.30 to  8.30. This is a good thing, it means I can sleep till 10- 10.30 am and then get up for a nice mid-day walk to work.

First day back after the holidays. I am feeling much more motivated to work after my extraordinarily long holidays. Turns out the holiday I get (3 and half weeks) is damn good. All my friends returned to work last week or had no holiday to begin with (Retail). So yeah, I might complain a lot, but a 3+ week paid holiday is pretty darn good.

Not much else to say. I am enjoying the new hours (So far) and looking forward to the mental focus I should have tonight (A day of work motivates me to do my creative work). The internet is going very slow so I might wait until later in the day and see if it speeds up any.

Summer in Auckland City….very hot. Nights are coolest and so over the holidays I have adjusted to a nocturnal circadian rhythm, I’ll go to sleep between 1 and 3am when it’s almost cool.

Nothing much else. Same old same old, I've had a busy last week...but now back to work so things a little  more tame.

I stopped coming on EP without very much warning...yeah, sorry about that. I see plenty of things waiting for me so that'll be fun.



As I said on some random story about holiday plans, I went home for Christmas. Had a great time, enjoyed it a lot. Fed the chickens, saw the three new ducks. Met the new rooster, met my sisters new pony 'flicker'...Had a friend down on the second week and drove a lot. I hate driving, but I drove a lot and am pretty confident I could get my full license now.



What else... Lots of things actually. Without the internet I was forced to live in my meat body. I adjusted my body-clock to allow for long night nights working on my new Novel 'Journey' (I say new as if 'Si' is old). When my mate came down we drove, swum in the river and lazed around the house (My family with the other neighbours up at the largest farm, it's a traditional thing) with the house to ourselves we could try new things like barbecuing which might not sound like much, but I've only been taught how to barbecue once and that was about ten years ago, but then again it wasn't much trouble to figure it out; the chicken sausages were delicious.

Watched a few movies, ended up renting more then we could watch, but gave a good boost to the economy of Bethlehem (The nearest bunch of shops with a recently opened mall of poor layout)



Anyway, sorry for the unexplained cut-off...here I am.

Hope everyone had a great holiday, I still have another week, but for many the fun is over... another year...Yay for humans! We can put another notch on our belts.



I saw some strange things in the sky last night. In the country, with no streetlights or nearby buildings, you can see the stars with stunning clarity. Only people who have seen a country sky can know how unique it is...it's worth hours of watching.

Anyway, strange things in the sky, I need to do some research to figure out if it is explicable or unique before I start sharing scary stories.



So I was in the country...and NO BROADBAND. I tried to go on EP once and almost made it to my page before my mothers win 98 (Probably from 95") killed explorer. I saw the front page and like the new layout. But that was the one time I tried to go on the net, it wasn't worth the trouble...and living off-line is a good grounder.



Peace out to all my hommy g's

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext00/pntmn10.txt

So today I read half of an Ebook called the Pentamerone, it’s by Giambattista Basile.

It is a mix of horror and gore.

None of the fairy-tales you hold dear are as you remember them. They all come from darker origins, some are outright horror stories where the baddy (From modern perspective) wins the battle.

Puss in boots never had boots.

Cinderella actually had 6 wicked step-sisters, 

and it was a special plant she had (A fairy plant, a common element in these old tales) from which she gained her wish of going to the ball.  

Her name wasn’t changed to Cinderella, it was changed to Cannetella. She used the magic of the plant to craft a gown so that she might attend the ball. In this older version there was not just one ball, there was a week of lavish Balls which Cannetella attended, and each night the King saw her and was overcome by her beauty. But here is the major difference… the king is her father! He is turned on by his daughter, and so sends an attendant to follow her (She uses fairy magic each time, usually throwing riches of various sorts to halt the attendant). 

I won’t ruin the ending, it involves an ogre and a trap… but here is the moral lesson

     "He who stumbles and does not fall,

     Is helped on his way like a rolling ball."

So take from that what you will, Cinderella’s origins are a little more complicated then I thought.

There are plenty more, the closest to the original that I’ve read so far would be the old version of puss-in-boots, the only difference I can recall from my child-hood version is that in this older version there are no boots.

All the stories have moral lessons, some better then others . Here’s a view of old-time racism

"Embrace me then," said Nella, "for I am the

fire of your heart." But the Prince seeing the dark hue of her face

answered, "I would sooner take you for the coal than the fire, so

keep off--don't blacken me." Whereupon Nella, perceiving that he

did not know her, called for a basin of clean water and washed her

face. As soon as the cloud of soot was removed the sun shone

forth; and the Prince, recognising her, pressed her to his heart and

acknowledged her for his wife. Then he had her sisters thrown into

an oven, thus proving the truth of the old saying--

     "No evil ever went without punishment."

Anyways, just ranting. These truer fairy-tales are far more interesting then the sugary versions we tell now.

Put this on my work notice board, right under another ad that promised spiritual healing (And also spiritual counselling!) . I thought the ad for spiritual healing was so nutso, I had to make my own. So of course I made it for Atheistic healing, I included my name and phone number, and received no calls (Although I was called the resident atheist…as if there should only be one?)

The other ad said basically the same thing, but with spiritual tones and a man named Paul who has found a good market amongst the simple.

My atheistic healing has no such market unfortunately.

They get chensu healers in here sometimes. Oriental men who perform a chensu massage… what is this massage you wonder? Well I’ve seen it…they run their hands over your body (No contact) and then they breath in short sharp breaths for awhile. That’s a chensu massage; I looked it up online and found nothing about this miracle healing… I sometimes wonder about the average IQ of the average telemarketer.

I considered putting a health poster up next to the colourful display that elaborated on the benefits of a random berry in the orient that will, basically, cure everything (Even cancer!). it might have been better to do that, as the promised berry poster is definitely more dangerous for the simple then the other one is… but I didn’t like the sounds of Paul (Who’s poster was also home-grown, but had clip-art instead of flashy fonts.)

Do you like the flashy fonts? I downloaded them onto my work computer just to make this. See if you can name some.

Anyways peace out to all my faithless buthas and sistas.

Monkey religion, side 1

Side 2

Today I have a management meeting with my Boss and his Boss. I took two and a half days off work at the beginning off last week. Some of you noticed I was gone for awhile, off the radar… inconspicuously absent.

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately… A hellovalot. I’ve been wanting to go to Universality, but finding the practicalities of organising and securing funds a daunting task. Something else that is draining my time is the quest for new work. I am desperate for a new job, I have been searching and going to interviews (Last one was last Monday, I thought it went really well, but he did not get back to me) and on top of that I’ve been lazy and am starting to detest my physical state… long hair, gradually creeping layer of fat over unused muscles… damnit. I used to run 6 kms a day! Now I sit for 7 and a half hours, and then go home and sit for a few hours more before going to bed and lying down for 7 hours. Everyday I’m telling myself ‘Tomorrow you’ll start that exercise regain, and every day I do nothing (In this reality) and tell myself ‘You had better do something soon, because inaction will only make this self-perception problem worse.’

Anyway, I took two and a half days off, having length discussions with family about money, and then trying to find some peace. My peace came in the form of a new project I call ‘Journey’ about a man, a story-teller, who can’t stay on any one earth , he finds himself falling through a variety of worlds and has only his story-telling ability to live on. It is a highly personal project, the protagonist is a man after my own heart, I’m jealous of the main character, but glad I started, he’s helping me sort some things.

Two and a half days off, due to stress, mental stress. I’m so freaken weird! Perhaps I’m so tired from fighting the manipulations of my work-place…because I’m certainly the only one who finds no pride in achieving targets or in my team coming first place. I am a total nut-case to my colleagues I’m sure, no doubt they hope I hurry up and move on.

It would be nice to meet someone who values me for me, and not for how I work.

Anyway, this management meeting is obviously because I am wrong. I’m wrong because I long ago used up my sick days, and have already been warned about attendance.

Obviously, just because I have been warned about attendance; does not mean I will come in on days as low as those. But what does that mean to the company? Nil. They don’t care how stressed I may have been, or how my head has been hanging low and grim for weeks now… how is that important when there are business targets to achieve? How could I be so stupid to count myself ahead of dollars?

Silly me, thinking that I should hold my well-being ahead of all else. I’ve had my priorities in the wrong places! What I should have been doing is dialling more customers, talking to them for longer about the extra money they can spend on phone plans they don’t need. I should have been worrying about the business! How stupid of me, dumb dumb dumb.

I don’t know which of these things is more important. The relationships, the uni, the money, the new job, the present job… And in ten to twenty minutes I will be sitting in a room with my boss and his boss, looking at a list of things I am expected to work on. Fuck that, I’m working on me…

I hate this job.

On a positive, am in touch with an old friend I may be able to get some time with soon enough. This guy is very smart, might give me a new perspective.

This was a smebro bitch-fest.

I've had a crisis of conscience that has overshadowed my last week. Educated myself on how bad it is for billions of people on this little planet of ours...I'm almost nauseous because of our western ideals... I sit here at my desk and make money for a company that exists purely to make money… I go home and watch TV shows with fancy sets where hosts give middle-class Americans gifts like new houses and supplies to last them a year…and all I can think about is how easy it is for us to not care. We live out our self-obsessed existences without a second thought for the billions that would appreciate our place so much more; we complain and bitch about our problems that are so trivial compared to the struggle for food and water, or the struggle against oppressive forces.  We have no clue how bad the human experience can be… Or how easy it would be to initiate great changes.

The western ideals are right and wrong. Right because they provide the systems that can structure a decent society…and wrong because we still hold onto our silly concepts of nationalism which seems to be the ticket to ignoring the true troubles in humanity.

So while I dwell on my issues, I can’t help but feel like an idiot for complaining about my station…I have it better then Billions, how can I help billions have it as good as I do?  I can’t.

This kind of thinking, while positive in theory...is making western life seem very trivial... Is this why we find it so easy to ignore the poor and hungry? Because they make us unhappy or because we find it easy to pretend they aren't real people?

I’m lost in my mind at the moment, miserable but in perspective. What a crappy year this has been for this stupid westerner

http://nymag.com/news/features/30020/

Not that I care for global warming talk about Humans destroying the world. But it does warm my heart to see us working on sustainable living. Farms in the cities will benefit us all, not because of any eco-system reason (Although you're free to think that) .

Cities cannot survive as importers, we in the western would have cities that consume like crazy and pump out wasted resources. We need to even out our combined metabolism. We need independant cities.